12 Steps to Whole Foods

Making Salad the Star
carbonation that robs your red blood cells of oxygen, chemicals your body cannot digest or eliminate, and
either 10 tsp. of sugar per can, and/or NutraSweet, and/or caffeine. Pork is considered “unclean” by various
religions for good reasons: pigs have no sweat glands or lymph system, and their cooked juices have a
chemical composition eerily similar to urine. Pork takes the human body three days or even weeks to
completely digest, and we humans are built to digest our food in a day or less; otherwise it becomes putrefied
and toxic in our long digestive tract.
You would be wise to make a short list of foods you simply never touch. People always say that “balance is the
key.” While that’s a good saying that applies to many things, you’d agree that common sense dictates that “just
a little” arsenic in one’s diet doesn’t equate to “balance.” Neither does getting “just a little” dose of poisons like
MSG, aspartame (NutraSweet), and nitrates/nitrites—even if you do choose to indulge in a little white flour,
white sugar, meat, or cheese occasionally.
What Salad Greens Should I Buy?
With green smoothies, we are able to easily use cruciferous greens, the heavy-textured ones with a peppery,
slightly bitter, or savory flavors (like kale, collards, mustard, radish, and turnip greens), along with milder
tasting spinach and chard. With salads, you can save a bit of those heavier greens out of your green smoothie to
add denser texture, if you want, but here we mostly concentrate on lettuces.
Primary Greens—with a Mild Flavor
NOTE: Iceberg lettuce isn’t included because it contains little nutrition and I never use it.
Romaine (crunchy)
Red leaf and green leaf lettuces (available year 'round)
Butterhead/Boston/Bibb lettuce (delicate texture and buttery taste)
Spinach
Mache (mild flavored, grows in the winter)
Mesclun or Spring Greens (a mixture of salad greens grown and/or packaged together)
Secondary Greens—to Mix into a Salad Made with One of the Primary Greens
Watercress (peppery flavor)
Arugula (mustard-like flavor)
Dandelion greens (can be bitter—harvest these weeds away from roadways)
Radicchio (shred it long and thin)
Escarole (mildly bitter)
Baby chicory / frisée / curly endive (curly leafed)
Belgian endive (bitter)
Cabbages (red, green, savoy—have a coarse, crunchy texture)
58 12 Steps to Whole Foods
© Copyright Robyn Openshaw